By Marilyn Carpenter, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA
Evaluating fairy tales can be a challenge especially if the setting is another culture or country. Serving on the Children’s Literature Assembly for the National Council of Teachers of English Committee for Notables Books in English Language Arts demonstrated that challenge to me.
Our committee read over 900 books to find the thirty we would list as Notables. One of the books we selected was a tale set in China that had been recast from a familiar European story. The new setting was a vehicle for the illustrator to retell the story with a Chinese setting and characters. After a thoughtful discussion we selected the book for our list. Later, one of our committee members learned from a colleague who had been born in China that the book had numerous errors. That colleague wrote, “I don’t see any rationale for setting the story in China except to exploit the Chinese culture. There are many cultural inaccuracies in the story.” The committee had a lengthy discussion over e-mail. We consulted other colleagues who had grown up in China. They all agreed that there were many cultural inaccuracies. Concerned about those inaccuracies and the erroneous portrait of Chinese culture that children would receive, we decided to remove the book from our Notables list. Fortunately, no articles reviewing the books on the list had yet been published.
Prior to this experience, I would have predicted that since our committee was comprised of seven experts on children’s literature, we would not have made such an error. Upon reflection, I realized that since our committee lacked anyone with deep knowledge of Chinese culture, our mistake was understandable. I’ve since become more cautious in reviewing books that are set in cultures with which I am unfamiliar. In this posting I will discuss some of the ways I have found to be more aware of how to evaluate fairy tales set in other cultures because as Jane Yolen writes in Touch Magic, “The second function of folklore is to provide a way of looking at another culture from the inside out” (p. 16). We certainly want our students to be able to look at other cultures from the inside, so it is imperative that we seek out books that provide authentic information about those cultures.
Mingshui Cai in his chapter in Stories Matter focuses on the requirement of authentic cultural details, “Cultural authenticity is a basic criterion in the sense that no matter how imaginative and how well written a story is, it should be rejected if it seriously violates the integrity of a culture” (p. 169). Kathy Short’s title of her June blog entry asserts, “Details Matter, Especially If It’s My Culture.” The question for us as reviewers of children’s books is how can we determine if a book “seriously violates the integrity of a culture?”
I have found one answer in the guidance provided by the authors of Charlote Huck’s Children’s Literature 9th Edition. Their criteria for evaluating folktales is invaluable in accessing fairy tales for cultural authenticity, “In evaluating a book about a particular culture, we need to ask if it truly represents that group’s experience. … Do the details of the story authentically portray the experience of the represented minority? Is the experience of the protagonist interpreted by someone from the dominant culture” (p. 110). The authors include further guidelines for evaluation:
• Is there some mention or citation of the original source for this tale?
• Is the plot simple and direct?
• Is the language lively and engaging and in keeping with the oral tradition?
• Does a theme emerge from the telling of the tale? If so, what is the story’s message or moral?
• Do illustrations add to and extend the story? Are illustrations and details true to the culture represented?
• Does the story represent cultural norms, or is it rewritten to conform to Western mores? (p. 281)
I use the above criteria to evaluate all fairy tales that I review, especially if the story is set in another culture. If a book is set in a culture I am not familiar with, I also try to find out more about the setting and the cultural practices by investigating other books on the culture and web sites. For example, a recent fairy tale set in China had several Buddhist names. I checked them for authenticity on a Web site cataloging Zen Buddhist Names. Additionally, Holly Johnson provides other excellent guidelines to support our evaluations in her WOW Currents entry, Geography & International Literature, Part I.
Finally, whenever possible I ask a colleague or a friend who are insiders to a culture featured in a book to help me evaluate the book. Next week, I will describe how that process has expanded my understanding of other cultures and given me a more in-depth way of evaluating books.
Fairy Tales that Are Culturally Authentic:
- Lon Po Po by Ed Young
- Princess Furball by Charlotte Huck
- The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson
- Yeh-Shen by Ai-Ling Louie
Please visit wowlit.org to browse or search our growing database of books, to read one of our two on-line journals, or to learn more about our mission.
- Themes: Marilyn Carpenter
- Descriptors: Books & Resources, WOW Currents
Marilyn- You raise excellent points. I recently gave “Climbing the Stairs” to a colleague who is Indian (from India) as I was unsure of it’s authenticity. She said she would have her mother read it as well as it’s an historical piece. It’s a slippery slope we navigate when working with literature not of our own culture ( Give me a book about a dairy farm and I am all over it now!) Barb
It’s also complicated by the fact that cultures are complex, multifaceted and sometimes contradictory. People from the same culture don’t all have exactly the same cultural traits and values. Stories are going to reflect that complexity. Even if a person is from the country where the book is set, that person may not be familiar with the culture/s represented in the book.
Janine & Barb,
I keep wondering about how to carefully evaluate books that are not from my culture? But I especially wonder about how K-12 classroom teachers have the time to evaluate books for authenticity. I have received review copies from most of the major publishers for the last 28 years. When I gave workshops for teachers, especially in California, I would highlight books in Spanish. However, I stopped. The reason was that I was not a proficient speaker of Spanish and couldn’t be sure that the books were accurately written in Spanish. When I had bookstalked books in Spanish for children the teachers would always inquire what region was the basis of the language – Chilie, Spain, Mexico, etc. I couldn’t be sure. So I stopped sharing such books. However, the need for teachers to know such books was still there.
I asked a colleague who is originally from Colombia to evaluate the Spanish in a bilingual picture book. The book was about a Mexican-American family living on the West Coast. As my colleague read it through, she kept saying things like, “Well, I wouldn’t say it this way, but maybe Mexican-Americans would” and “My Mexican-American students here in the Rio Grande Valley wouldn’t use this phrase, but maybe they do on the West Coast.” It’s complicated!